As I desperately wanted to figure out how I can transfer Sims I created on one PC to another without uploading them to the Gallery, I found a somewhat functional way of doing so. This is a step-by-step tutorial on how to manage your CAS demo creations offline, in case you make one Sim on someone’s computer and want to transfer it to your own Library.

1. Localizing “Tray” folder

In My Documents, navigate to: My Documents/Electronic Arts/The Sims 4 Create A Sim Demo/Tray. Tray is the folder that holds all “My Library” creations – Sims, households and possibly houses/rooms in future. All “My Library” creations are computer-based (not account-based), which means that despite being logged into the same account, Sims you save to “My Library” on one computer won’t appear in “My Library” on another.

2. Localizing specific Sim/Household files

Each Sim/Household contains 5 files of following extensions: .householdbinary; .trayitem; .hhi; .hhi; .sgi files. If you just created a Sim/Household, in your Tray folder, sort files by date and five newest files with these extensions are your Sim/Household

3. Saving the Sim/Household

Create a “Saved Sims Local” folder, where you’ll make subfolders for each household/Sim you wish to save.

Delete the household from the Gallery once you backed up the files

After deleting the household from My Library, its files are also deleted

Copy files from Saved Sims Local back to Tray

After files are back in Tray, so is the household in My Library in the CAS

Although the Sim/Household is already saved, you want to extract it from the Tray folder. In My Documents/Electronic Arts/The Sims 4 Create A Sim Demo create a new folder of your own choice (or elsewhere you think is easier for you to localize later on). Let’s say I name it “Saved Sims Local“. Take localized files of the specific Sim/Household and copy them into a sub-folder by their Sim/Household name. In my previews, I haven’t created the sub-folder because I’m only dealing with one household, but if you intend on saving more, having separate folders for every household’s files is very important so you never mix files and get confused.

4. Save previously made household without knowing what their files are

Don’t worry. In the worst case, you can copy all files from “Tray” folder and paste them into your own Tray folder. You’ll get a prompt asking if you wish to overwrite files – that means you have some of those households already installed, such as Andre, Ollie, Babs etc. who are in My Library by default. If you copied Sims you didn’t want, you can get rid of those files by going into the demo and hand-delete all households you don’t want. Deleting a household instantly deletes its files.

Hopefully this tutorial was helpful. It’s not the ideal solution, but it’s good for what we have right now. If you have any questions or issues following this tutorial, feel free to ask in the comments below and I’ll be quick to answer them all!